Cochrane Db Syst Rev
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Cochrane Db Syst Rev · Nov 2023
ReviewInterventions to prevent or cease electronic cigarette use in children and adolescents.
The prevalence of e-cigarette use has increased globally amongst children and adolescents in recent years. In response to the increasing prevalence and emerging evidence about the potential harms of e-cigarettes in children and adolescents, leading public health organisations have called for approaches to address increasing e-cigarette use. Whilst evaluations of approaches to reduce uptake and use regularly appear in the literature, the collective long-term benefit of these is currently unclear. ⋯ We identified no RCTs that met the inclusion criteria for the review, and as such, there is no evidence available from RCTs to assess the potential impact of interventions targeting children and adolescent e-cigarette use, tobacco use, or any unintended adverse effects. Evidence from studies employing other trial designs (e.g. non-randomised) may exist; however, such studies were not eligible for inclusion in the review. Evidence from studies using non-randomised designs should be examined to guide actions to prevent or cease e-cigarette use. This is a living systematic review. We search for new evidence every month and update the review when we identify relevant new evidence. Please refer to the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews for the current status of this review.
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Cochrane Db Syst Rev · Nov 2023
ReviewDifferent antibiotic treatments for group A streptococcal pharyngitis.
Antibiotics provide only modest benefit in treating sore throat, although their effectiveness increases in people with positive throat swabs for group A beta-haemolytic streptococci (GABHS). It is unclear which antibiotic is the best choice if antibiotics are indicated. This is an update of a review first published in 2010, and updated in 2013, 2016, and 2021. ⋯ We are uncertain if there are clinically relevant differences in symptom resolution when comparing cephalosporins and macrolides with penicillin in the treatment of GABHS tonsillopharyngitis. Low-certainty evidence in children suggests that carbacephem may be more effective than penicillin for symptom resolution. There is insufficient evidence to draw conclusions regarding the other comparisons in this review. Data on complications were too scarce to draw conclusions. Antibiotics have a limited effect in the treatment of GABHS pharyngitis and the results do not demonstrate that other antibiotics are more effective than penicillin. In the context of antimicrobial stewardship, penicillin can be used if treatment with an antibiotic is indicated. All studies were conducted in high-income countries with a low risk of streptococcal complications, so there is a need for trials in low-income countries and disadvantaged populations, where the risk of complications remains high.
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Keratoconus remains difficult to diagnose, especially in the early stages. It is a progressive disorder of the cornea that starts at a young age. Diagnosis is based on clinical examination and corneal imaging; though in the early stages, when there are no clinical signs, diagnosis depends on the interpretation of corneal imaging (e.g. topography and tomography) by trained cornea specialists. Using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse the corneal images and detect cases of keratoconus could help prevent visual acuity loss and even corneal transplantation. However, a missed diagnosis in people seeking refractive surgery could lead to weakening of the cornea and keratoconus-like ectasia. There is a need for a reliable overview of the accuracy of AI for detecting keratoconus and the applicability of this automated method to the clinical setting. ⋯ AI appears to be a promising triage tool in ophthalmologic practice for diagnosing keratoconus. Test accuracy was very high for manifest keratoconus and slightly lower for subclinical keratoconus, indicating a higher chance of missing a diagnosis in people without clinical signs. This could lead to progression of keratoconus or an erroneous indication for refractive surgery, which would worsen the disease. We are unable to draw clear and reliable conclusions due to the high risk of bias, the unexplained heterogeneity of the results, and high applicability concerns, all of which reduced our confidence in the evidence. Greater standardization in future research would increase the quality of studies and improve comparability between studies.
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Acute otitis media (AOM) is one of the most common diseases in childhood for which antibiotics are commonly prescribed; a systematic review reported a pooled prevalence of 85.6% in high-income countries. This is an update of a Cochrane Review first published in the Cochrane Library in 1997 and updated in 1999, 2005, 2009, 2013 and 2015. ⋯ This review reveals that antibiotics probably have no effect on pain at 24 hours, a slight effect on pain in the days following and only a modest effect on the number of children with tympanic perforations, contralateral otitis episodes and abnormal tympanometry findings at two to four weeks compared with placebo in children with AOM. In high-income countries, most cases of AOM spontaneously remit without complications. The benefits of antibiotics must be weighed against the possible harms: for every 14 children treated with antibiotics, one child experienced an adverse event (such as vomiting, diarrhoea or rash) that would not have occurred if antibiotics were withheld. For most children with mild disease in high-income countries, an expectant observational approach seems justified. Therefore, clinical management should emphasise advice about adequate analgesia and the limited role for antibiotics.
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Cochrane Db Syst Rev · Nov 2023
ReviewVentilation tubes (grommets) for otitis media with effusion (OME) in children.
Otitis media with effusion (OME) is an accumulation of fluid in the middle ear cavity, common amongst young children. It may cause hearing loss which, when persistent, may lead to developmental delay, social difficulty and poor quality of life. Management includes watchful waiting, autoinflation, medical and surgical treatment. Insertion of ventilation tubes has often been used as the preferred treatment. ⋯ There may be small short- and medium-term improvements in hearing and persistence of OME with VTs, but it is unclear whether these persist after longer follow-up. The RCTs included do not allow us to say when (or how much) VTs improve hearing in any specific child. However, interpretation of the evidence is difficult: many children in the control groups recover spontaneously or receive VTs during follow-up, VTs may block or extrude, and OME may recur. The limited evidence in this review also affects the generalisability/applicability of our findings to situations involving children with underlying conditions (e.g. craniofacial syndromes) or the use of long-acting tubes. Consequently, RCTs may not be the best way to determine whether an intervention is likely to be effective in any individual child. Instead, we must better understand the different OME phenotypes to target interventions to children who will benefit most, and avoid over-treating when spontaneous resolution is likely.